Britain

Chris Huhne

The road to 2015

Chris Huhne, the former energy and climate change secretary, shocked Westminster this morning by pleading guilty to charges of perverting the course of justice. These are linked to a speeding offence committed in 2003, when Mr Huhne’s car was allegedly caught by a speed camera on the motorway between Stansted Airport and London. It is alleged that he pressured his (now estranged) wife to take the penalty points so that he would avoid prosecution. Previously he had said that there was "no truth" to the claims.

Mr Huhne, now facing a prison sentence, is a senior Liberal Democrat who very nearly beat Nick Clegg to the party leadership in 2007. He was one of the four-man negotiating team that brokered Britain’s coalition government after the 2010 election. As energy secretary, he championed carbon targets and renewable energy—Lib Dems pride themselves on their environmentalism—but had a fractious relationship with some of his Conservative colleagues, particularly during the referendum campaign on the Alternative Vote in 2011.

Mr Huhne contributed to the 2004 “Orange Book”, which is associated with the Lib Dems’ economically liberal wing. But in 2007 he also worked on a collection of essays, “Reinventing The State”, which expressed the party's more left-leaning instincts. A photo of him at a demonstration (complete with a “Green Taxes Now” placard) appeared on the cover.

This is illustrative: Mr Huhne’s political career was built on an ability to span the void dividing his party’s classical liberals from its social democrats. In 2007 he tacked towards the left, and most of his party’s activists, in his bid to win the leadership. Until recently, rumours had swirled around Westminster suggesting that, if exonerated, he might find himself leading the party after all—his name, along with those of Vince Cable and Tim Farron, headed the list of Mr Clegg’s potential “left-wing” challengers.

Bellwether forecast

So today’s news removes a potential rival to Mr Clegg, strips the Lib Dems of a versatile party heavyweight and will do little to improve public attitudes towards MPs. It is significant for another reason, too. Mr Huhne has resigned his seat, Eastleigh, a charmed suburb of Southampton. The by-election there, the first in a Lib-Tory seat since the formation of the coalition, will be revealing. The seat is a Lib Dem stronghold: Mr Huhne won 46.5% at the 2010 election; the Conservative candidate trailed with 39.3% and Labour won a nugatory 9.6%. But the upcoming vote will give each party a chance to rehearse for the next general election.

The Lib Dems intend to hold seats like Eastleigh by running hyper-local campaigns and capitalising on incumbency. Mr Huhne’s guilty plea may not endear his party to his former constituents, but he bequeaths a well-developed local branch with a good mailing list and a decent supply of door-knockers. In southern, Conservative-facing seats like this one, the Lib Dems' role in the coalition is less controversial than it is in northern, Labour-facing ones. If they can hold Eastleigh, their chances for the 2015 election are better than many reckon.

The Conservatives' strategy for the 2015 election is to bombard 40 target seats with the concentrated might of their campaign resources. They plan to put their strongest asset—David Cameron (though recent plotting suggests some of his backbenchers are oblivious to the fact)—at the heart of a “presidential” campaign. Policy will be “weaponised”: calibrated and communicated to draw clear, populist dividing lines with the other parties. Winning Eastleigh would give Mr Cameron a temporary respite from his internal critics. Failing to do so would amplify their personal attacks and fuel the plotting.

Itchen to start

Mr Miliband is under less pressure. Suburban and southern, Eastleigh is not a traditional Labour seat. But, say people like John Denham, a prominent Miliband ally keen to improve the party’s poor standing in southern England, the party needs to invest efforts in such constituencies. Ascending from third place to first place, he says, may take several parliaments, but the party has to start somewhere. Indeed, Labour campaigners from Mr Denham’s seat, Southampton Itchen, have campaigned at farmers' markets in Hampshire (the affluent county containing Eastleigh) over the past year. In 1997, the party won constituencies across the south, defying naysayers. Back then, the Labour candidate in Eastleigh won 26.8% of the vote. Matching this result would suggest that Mr Miliband can pick up crucial southern swing seats at the 2015 election.

The final party to watch is UKIP. The party will probably outperform its 3.6% showing in 2010 by a long way. But in what numbers will Conservative voters flock to UKIP this time? Has Mr Cameron’s big speech on Europe put a lid on the issue? By-elections give small parties like UKIP an useful podium: concentrating their resources on one constituency, they can overcome some of the disadvantages that they face in national elections.

Today marks the end of Mr Huhne's political career. It also puts British politics on the road to 2015.

@Omicron - To argue that his wife, who is incidentally fighting her charges on the grounds of 'marital coercion', is to blame for Huhne's decision to lie consistently for 8 years is totally unacceptable. Would you have made the same remark if the gender roles were reversed?

If I remember rightly, Mr Huhne's problem was that his driving licence already had 9 points on it, so that he got his then wife to take the rap, not to avoid prosecution, as you and the rest of the press say, which would have been silly, but to avoid disqualification under the totting up procedure, which for a MEP regularly going to and from the airport would have been very inconvenient.

He had many options, dont forget he is/was one of the richest men in Parliament . He could have taken a taxi or hired a driver at his own expense with no financial problems at all or ,I am sure, he could have charged it to his EU expenses and noone would have batted an eyelid.
I think he just felt he was above the law and it seves him right.

I imagine he was going for a "something will turn up" strategy. He was free as long as he denied the charge and wasn't convicted. Hopefully he would get off on a technicality. Otherwise he could expect a prison sentence if he plead guilty.
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The costs are potentially a longer prison sentence for not accepting guilt earlier and having his family's painful warfare displayed for the world to see.
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On the whole I think he made the wrong call, but I wouldn't have got my wife to take my penalty points in the first place. I guess it made sense to him, given the kind of man he is. I doubt his political situation played very much in his calculations. The immediate issue was avoiding prison.

A more interesting long-term issue is whether Mr Huhne's apparent strategy (keep lying until the last minute and then back down) has in fact worked. His political penalty looks to be much as it always would have been but he has had another two years in the limelight. This does not look much of an incentive for honesty for any other MPs who have committed crimes, such as expense fraud. Should we do something about this?

Nice one former Mrs Huhne, you have deprived the country of a politician that was doing a great job, particularly in stopping the Conervative party getting too right wing. Lets hope your revenge was worth the price the country has to pay for your petty bitterness.

Ah well, a politician who lies over a speeding ticket goes to jail, but politicians who lead a country into bankruptcy and lie their way into unnecessary wars strut the world free men, hailed as great statesmen

A small quibble: are you really using the word "Cassandra" correctly? Surely one cannot both win and defy Cassandras, as the classical connotation is that a Cassandra's predictions are always right, rather than simply the words of anyone in the business of prognosticating. Perhaps the accepted usage has expanded?

All the time I hear " I am innocent " The reason is simple. The law says this . You are innocent till proved guilty. This has led a farce in the attitude of many and they get the bailed out by the black coat lawyers who give them the chance to move freely around while the police hunt for the clues that may take at time very long . In the meantime the one who was in the box, moves around freely for years or is dead. I hope this will carry on as the no one is above the law and the lawyers make the most cash out of this. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

From a political point of view, evading a traffic ticket ranks about zero on the scale of political crimes. That this man’s political career is now ruined and he faces a prison term for this while others sit smugly in their office after grossly abusing their authority by stealing tens millions or redirecting hundreds of millions of public money to their cronies, is simply laughable. Will we next toss out high ranking bureaucrats for stealing paperclips and abusing the postage meter?

Yet this is the guy we caught so he gets nailed to the wall. While this is undoubtedly justice by the book, his record of substantive public service should count for something, but instead we have ignored that and treat him exactly as if he was an ordinary man who contributed nothing to society. Clearly, everyone must be equal before the law, and his crime must be recognized, but justice demands a sense of proportion and a sense of balance, and there is none of that here.

Then there is the issue of his wife who has ignored honor and any sense of proportion, and deliberately ruined the man’s career by betraying a trust. This was not done as a public service or as a redress of a serious wrong, for the crime is in itself trivial, but was done out of personal vindictiveness and spite. A vile act of revenge pure and simple that deserves nothing but scorn. Yet she will walk away from this with her bloodied knife in hand and few will raise a cry against the deed.

If this is what our society believes to be justice, then our society has surely lost its way.

Perhaps you should cast your mind back to certain activities of President Clinton, who was nearly impeached. To most Americans, his worst "crime" wasn't so much his affair with a young staffer, it was that he lied about it to a Congressional enquiry.
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In other words, Americans are very demanding when it comes to honesty.
I think that seen in that light, it's quite appropriate for Mr Huhne to pay a very heavy political price for his attempts to pervert the course of justice.

If one takes the survey of the hardest core criminals inundating the jails and criminal justice system they all will tell you a common story that 'it all started with something very small.' The moral of this sad saga that wasted a very talented person is 'we need to take full responsibility of our actions.'

We need to avoid ducking accountability, our closest friends and partners or family should not be ever put in a position that compromises theirs as well as our own. We need to go ahead and face the music bravely, when one puts himself in a position to face the 'unpleasant music.'

One should never forget that in a fair and nonjudgmental world, no one will throw stones since we all realise well that 'sinning' is rampant and the innate original sin stands tall as a continuous burden on our conscience. Even a secular person like me totally believe that before judging others in times like this we need to be compassionate. I hope he finds peace and sanctity from what appears to be a 'momentarily lack of judgement' that has cost him his career and brought so much pain.

Mr Huhne is not the first politician to come a cropper for mistaking the location of his brains as being between his legs rather than between his ears. It's cost him a promising career.
Byelections are often an inaccurate and misleading pointer to the following general election. Those winning "sensational" victories against the odds are regularly buried and forgotten a few years later.
With their well-oiled local machine, and the Tories current squabbles uppermost in the public mind, I fully expect the Lib Dems to retain Eastleigh.
And this scandal will join many others before, and to come as just another lurid newspaper headline.